Nüstart
Brand Strategy/ Visual Design / UX
Connect with thousands of career coaches globally.
Nüstart is a non-profit organization that works to connect formerly incarcerated persons with career coaching and resources at no cost. This product design required thoughtful brand strategy and design for each stage of the career coaching process.
Date
March 2022 - April 2022
Role
Visual + UX Designer/ Brand Strategiest
( The Challenge )
( The Challenge )
( The Challenge )
How do you connect formerly incarcerated persons with a user friendly and intuitive career coach search product?
The Design Process
Research
Ideate & Design
Test & Ideate
Research
USER INTERVIEWS
Conducted user interviews to gather data and information on target users - formerly incarcerated individuals.
PERSONAS
Target users
Competitive Audit
Audit of direct and indirect competitors provided direction on gaps and opportunities to address with the Nüstart app and responsive website.
Ideate
The ideation exercise "Crazy Eights" was used to brainstorm ways to address gaps identified in the competitive audit. The focus was specifically on streamlining the career coaching search process.
Design
Design
Design
Design
Design
01
Paper Wireframes
Red stars signify the elements that best addressed the user's pain points and needs.
02
Digital Wireframes
The initial designs focused on the user's search journey and main user flow by navigating them to career coaches "featured" and "rising stars" sections.
The filter feature provided the ability to further customize their search results.
03
Usability Study: parameters
Study Type
Unmoderated usability study
Location
USA, remote
Participants
6 participants
Length
15-30 minutes
B)
Usability Study: findings
04
Mockups + High Fidelity Prototype
Insights gathered from the usability study were used to iterate and design mock ups. The homepage now reflects a more direct and search friendly form on the user page. The dedicated search and results page features career coaches in a more user-friendly and approachable layout. Button sizes were increased for accessibility and the booking process was updated to reflect each step: date, time, reviewing details and confirmation of booking rather than having all components on the same page.
05
Sitemap
Test & Ideate
06
The screen size variation included mobile, tablet and desktop. The designs were optimized to fit the specific user needs of each device and screen size.
Responsive designs
What I learned
Applying a mobile first approach to the product design was successful in several ways. It allowed for progressive enhancement, designing with the user needs and pain points first as well as addressing a gap amongst direct and indirect competitors. I also learned that it's imperative to keep accessibility at the forefront as not all users, especially those are sight impaired may have a seamless experience. I plan to continue to iterate and add a microphone option for those who prefer the text-to-speech feature for search.
( Next Steps )
